February 17-21, 2014

This past week in 2nd Grade we celebrated Presidents Day by reading stories about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and watched some videos about their lives and presidencies.  We also talked about some other influential Presidents that our country has had.  We read a nonfiction story about explorers in our reading textbook and about Christopher Columbus.  We worked on compare and contrast with the information we learned about the Presidents and about the early explorers.  We worked on a Venn Diagram to visually see "compare and contrast".  In grammar, we worked on pronouns and possessive pronouns.  In math we explored expanded form and place value up to the hundreds.  In writing, we discussed making our writing more interesting not just "grocery list" writing.  We are currently discussing the solar system in science and our latest chapter covered the moon's phases.  We did a project with Oreo cookies where the students had to make the 8 phases of the moon using the cookies.  They then completed a "mini moon phase book" and of course got to eat their cookies at the end of the project!

February 10-14, 2014

This past week in 2nd Grade, we worked on the vowel teams of oi and oy.  Several of our spelling words also contained oi and oy words.  In math, we started working with hundreds.  We talked about place value and also started working on addition and subtraction of numbers in the hundreds.  We read about the Winter Olympics and did some compare/contrast of the Olympic games.  We also talked about plays and read a play in our reading books.  We then wrote our own short plays.  In science we continued to talk about the solar system and about the phases of the moon.  We made "love bugs" out of hearts to decorate our room for Valentine's Day and read about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.  We then did a writing activity for President's Day about what we would do if we were president.

February 3-7, 2014

This past week in 2nd Grade, we celebrated the 100th Day of School.  For the 100th day, we dressed up like we were 100 years old!  It was fun and interesting to see all the creative ways the kids came up with to look like they were 100 years old.  We also continued to work on fractions, quotation marks, the vowel teams ow and ou, and wrapped up our chapters on weather in science and communities in social studies. We also briefly touched on the Winter Olympics since they just started.  We'll continue doing some other activities this month around the Winter Olympics.  This coming week will be busy with parent teacher conferences and our valentine party.  We'll have a 2:00 dismissal on both of those days (Feb. 13th and 14th).

Happy 100th Day of School!

January 27-31, 2014

This past week in 2nd Grade we started working with fractions, continued with contractions, and made Super Bowl and Groundhog predictions.  We also worked on the proper way to write a title and worked on what makes a sentence a complete sentence not just a fragment.  I expect that all answers be written in a complete sentence on papers from here on out for the rest of the year.  We are going to be working hard this second semester to become "grown up" second grade writers.  Math facts are still important to be practicing and money/time will continue to be reviewed through out the rest of the year along with all our other math concepts.  The class voted and graphed the results of what they think the groundhog will see...shadow or no shadow.  On Monday we'll discuss what Phil found out.  Speaking of weather, we'll also have our next science test on Monday about our chapter on weather.  The children made Super Bowl predictions and a craftivity to go with it.  The majority of the class picked the Bronco's to win, so we'll also find out on Monday if the majority was right!